School Experience Placement - History and English

PinkCat86

Hello everybody,

I am currently going through the secondary teaching diploma course (postgrad) in Hibernia College; In order to successfully graduate, I will need two school experience placements occurring in November 2012 and February 2013.

The catch is that the college won't provide any help nor guidance for the placement; Each student has to find his or her own. Until today, the search has been as difficult as looking for a job: looking in the Cork area (where I live) I was met with every shade the "NO" answer can come in, from the schools being fully staffed to local protectionism in the form of "we only accept students from UCC".

I won't even comment on the concept of a college taking the big part of 10k € from people and then refusing to provide any kind of assistance towards requirements that they set; What I will ask is if anybody knows any secondary school that accepts experience placements - ideally in the Cork area and suburbs, but really anywhere that can be reached with a train in the morning.

Thanks in advance!

dory

When do you have to find it by and when is the placement? It would be pretty impossible to find it now for this year as the school would have Dips already. And they're probably inundated with people looking for places for next year from UCC, they'll know soon enough if they do or don't have UCC'ers for next year.

With UCC you have to have a place within a certain milage (altho they seem very lax on that). So going outside that area would increase your chances.

Failing that, schools that are seen to be 'challenging' will have less people from UCC applying to them.

Seanchai

PinkCat86 wrote: »

The catch is that the college won't provide any help nor guidance for the placement; Each student has to find his or her own.... I won't even comment on the concept of a college taking the big part of 10k € from people and then refusing to provide any kind of assistance towards requirements that they set

1) When I did the HDip/PGDE/PDE the university didn't place me in a school for the teacher training aspect. I had to find it myself. A list of schools in Dublin (which I could get online, as can you get a list of Cork schools) was the entirety of their contribution to my placement. Hibernia is just following the dreadful example of the rest of them. All of these "teacher training" colleges are a law unto themselves.

2) The combination of History and English is, in career terms, a suicidal choice. People with that precise combination are everywhere. The easy, waffly subjects have plenty of teachers, naturally enough. Paying €10k in the hope of getting a job teaching these ridiculously oversubscribed subjects was entirely your own choice. They have been oversubscribed for years. There's only so much blame that can be justly placed at the door of the colleges. They are all clearly in it for the money, not because there is a need for teachers of these subjects. No student who has entered the Dip/PGDE/PDE in the past four years or so could honestly claim ignorance of the market for their teaching subjects.


I do agree, though, that all of these "teacher training" colleges - UCD, UCG, NUIM, NUIG etc - need to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck by the Department of Education and a system put in place where only people with subjects that are needed, or will be needed in the short term, are allowed on courses. It's a total waste of resources that people are getting on courses which serve society in no way.

UnLuckyAgain

Seanchai wrote: »

1)
The easy, waffly subjects have plenty of teachers, naturally enough.

Now, now.

PinkCat86

Seanchai wrote: »

...The easy, waffly subjects...

Wow. Just wow. Nice high throne you have there, be careful not to fall off of it.


About the rest, I know exactly where I stand - it will be difficult, but the problem is that right now I am being faced with a bunch of people not even GIVING THE OPPORTUNITY. To be completely honest, I did have the school experience placement arranged since long time; Said school decided to bail out on Monday giving silly excuses such as "we only accept people from UCC" (and they realize now? Did they even READ the documents they signed that clearly stated the name of the College?). Read "we had to

Now I am left in the s@#t trying to find another placement within the next two weeks, with all the places already taken or, even worse, with schools that clearly tell me "we accept none other than UCC" or even "We don't accept Hibernia students". Go figure.

That said, I would accept a placement anywhere. Be it Cork, Dublin, Dundalk, a field with three students and a sheep...so then again, if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be more than happy

allprops

See pm

whiteandlight

PinkCat86 wrote: »

Wow. Just wow. Nice high throne you have there, be careful not to fall off of it.


About the rest, I know exactly where I stand - it will be difficult, but the problem is that right now I am being faced with a bunch of people not even GIVING THE OPPORTUNITY. To be completely honest, I did have the school experience placement arranged since long time; Said school decided to bail out on Monday giving silly excuses such as "we only accept people from UCC" (and they realize now? Did they even READ the documents they signed that clearly stated the name of the College?). Read "we had to

Now I am left in the s@#t trying to find another placement within the next two weeks, with all the places already taken or, even worse, with schools that clearly tell me "we accept none other than UCC" or even "We don't accept Hibernia students". Go figure.

That said, I would accept a placement anywhere. Be it Cork, Dublin, Dundalk, a field with three students and a sheep...so then again, if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be more than happy

To be fair I don't think they were saying that the subjects are easy to teach as such, more that they are subjects that are a very popular combination in college and thus in teachers because in third level arts they can be seen as an easy road through. I may be wrong though

However tbh the situation is nothing like you posted initially. You are late looking for a school now and by your own admission this is because you thought it was sorted. I would propose that your problem is with the initial school and not the other schools who are now refusing you and the College for help in a tough spot. Many schools already have their dip students sorted and rightly or wrongly may have decided that they will stick with one college or another. This is their choice to make. And two possible reasons that I have come across for it are previous calibre of student teachers and time tabling with different college as placement times vary and this can be disruptive for schools and students. To be fair to the schools they are doing dip students a favour by taking them. I would advise you to send a stiffly worded letter to the college complaining about this. It ultimately is their job to ensure that this part of your training is not omitted

rainbowtrout

PinkCat86 wrote: »

Hello everybody,

I am currently going through the secondary teaching diploma course (postgrad) in Hibernia College; In order to successfully graduate, I will need two school experience placements occurring in November 2012 and February 2013.

The catch is that the college won't provide any help nor guidance for the placement; Each student has to find his or her own. Until today, the search has been as difficult as looking for a job: looking in the Cork area (where I live) I was met with every shade the "NO" answer can come in, from the schools being fully staffed to local protectionism in the form of "we only accept students from UCC".

I won't even comment on the concept of a college taking the big part of 10k € from people and then refusing to provide any kind of assistance towards requirements that they set; What I will ask is if anybody knows any secondary school that accepts experience placements - ideally in the Cork area and suburbs, but really anywhere that can be reached with a train in the morning.

Thanks in advance!

You should probably forget about worrying about why the college won't help you, they all expect you to find your own school so it seems to be fairly standard for the dip, and you wouldn't be in any better a position if you were doing in the dip in one of the universities.

Having said that if you are in a position to move for your placements, why not try an area that isn't located in the immediate radius of one of the dip universities, where it is less likely schools would have dip students? If you can move, why not try schools in Waterford, Wexford, Tipperary etc?

Also if you are willing to do your placement in a tougher school, it will stand to you in the long run and there will more than likely be less applicants to those schools if any at all

lestat21

Have you contacted the college to say that this has happened??

They wont arrange it for you but recently students have had difficulty getting placement and they are willing to help you out with advice and sometimes even providing you with the details of schools you havent considered... NUIG were very helpful in my case and other. When we started the dip in sept there was even some students who had been completely unable to get exp that was supposed to begin at the end of sept. They got loads of support from the college and one student was even allowed to start t.p. several weeks later than the rest of us.

solerina

[QUOTE=rainbowtrout;78333661
Having said that if you are in a position to move for your placements, why not try an area that isn't located in the immediate radius of one of the dip universities, where it is less likely schools would have dip students? If you can move, why not try schools in Waterford, Wexford, Tipperary etc?
[/QUOTE]

I agree with Rainbowtrout, you need to try Tipperary, kerry, waterford etc, you havnt said what part of cork you are in but if you are in the city its under 1 hour to lots of different places(Cahir, Cashel etc) where there may be schools who dont regularly get UCC students and so are not as difficult to get placements in.

implausible

Surely you have a relative or friend in a different part of the country that you could stay with while doing your TP.

I had to live with my granny many moons ago for the guts of three months. It was boring as hell, but I got all of my coursework done ahead of time and it's good for you as a teacher to be out of your comfort zone i.e. in a school where no-one knows you.